Dead Weight

by Ragan, T. R.

  “Leave him alone.” Jessica bent down next to Casey. “Are you alright?”

  He sat up.

  He was fine. “Why don’t you ask your dipshit friend why he’s lurking around Cathy Warner’s backyard? I think that’s the question we need answered.”

  “I think you need to mind your own business,” Jessica told her.

  “The side gate was open and I could have sworn I saw somebody,” Casey said as he put a hand to his throat. “Maybe I should leave.”

  “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard all night,” Hayley agreed.

  Jessica pointed at the house while she looked at Hayley. “Go away,” she said. “You’ve done enough.”

  “He’s been drinking,” Hayley said. “I don’t want him coming inside.” Hayley headed for the house where she could see Brittany standing at the door.

  Jessica and Casey came to their feet. “That’s the girl I’ve been telling you about.”

  “I guess you left out the part about her being crazy.”

  “She’s not crazy,” Jessica said in Hayley’s defense, but even as she said the words, she wasn’t so sure. “And you never told me you were coming over.”

  He shrugged. “I swear I saw someone back here. I thought maybe it was you and your friend.” He looked toward the tall dark trees in the corner of the yard. “I didn’t know your friend kept watch and carried knives.”

  “She’s not my friend.”

  Casey raked a hand through his long tangled hair. Her brother had introduced her to him a few months ago. Casey was twenty-five years old, and he had a full-time job at a grocery outlet. The few times they talked, he’d made her laugh. He did smell like beer, she thought, but she hadn’t known him for very long and she didn’t want to scare him off too soon by mentioning it. Jessica rubbed her arms. “If she tells Mrs. Warner and Lizzy that you were here, I could lose my job.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “If she’s smart, she won’t say a word. Not unless she wants everyone to know she carries knives in weird Rambo-like homemade sheaths. That’s one crazy chick,” he muttered under his breath.

  Jessica sighed. “You better go. I need to get back inside.”

  He didn’t waste any time taking off, heading back the same way he’d come. “I’ll give you a call sometime.”

  She watched him leave, figuring another one bit the dust.

  Chapter 25

  Starving to Death

  Sierra Mountains, Day 61

  Vivian stood and waited for the dizziness to pass before making her way to the kitchen. She knew she needed to eat, but she was no longer hungry.

  For anything.

  Even the thought of eating pumpkin spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting made her want to puke.

  Three weeks had passed since Melbourne’s last visit. The moment he left the cabin, she’d allowed herself liquids only, which included chicken broth. She also spent three to four hours a day on the treadmill.

  Melbourne seriously seemed to think he was doing her a favor. According to Melbourne, the contract she signed had some sort of no-backing-out clause. She didn’t recall reading anything of the sort, but that was water under the bridge. There was nothing she could do about any of that now.

  Unless she could escape, she might just be another missing person on a milk carton. Her only hope would be if somebody talked to her mother. Although she and her mother rarely talked, she had called her mom before she left to come here. In case something really bad had happened to Diane, she wanted at least one other person to know where she was. She even mentioned Anthony Melbourne’s name. Her mother was her only hope.

  For many years now, Vivian had done everything she could to make sure people stayed away from her, including paying her rent in advance. Her landlord knew better than to bother her; the few times he had tried, she’d given him a piece of her mind.

  Karma, Vivian thought, karma had come back to bite her in the ass.

  As they often did, her thoughts drifted back to Diane. Had Diane been here?

  Vivian had spent hours every day looking for clues, but so far she’d come up empty-handed. It was hard to tell if anyone had ever stayed here before.

  Melbourne was definitely a neat freak. If he touched something, he wiped it clean afterwards and then squeezed hand sanitizer onto his palms and rubbed his hands together for way too long. Melbourne had cleaned the insides of the appliances and the top of the cupboards when he was here last. He was a busy man. Why didn’t he have people do that for him? Unless nobody but Jane, his minion, knew about this cabin and what went on here.

  Melbourne had seemed a little too excited when he took her measurements. Not excited in a perverted way, though. Obsessed would be the word she would use to describe his actions: obsessed with cleanliness and obsessed with her measurements and weight.

  Although he’d seemed excited about her weight loss, he didn’t look at her with longing or desire. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t strange. He was an odd duck alright. She figured he might suffer from some form of OCD since he obviously had an unhealthy fear of germs.

  Vivian set the can of chicken broth on the counter. When she turned to get the can opener, something happened. She looked down at her foot and saw that it had nearly come out of the cuff. She let out a whoop of joy and then grabbed the chain and walked quickly back into the main room.

  Sitting on the edge of the pull-out bed, she propped her ankle on her knee and began to work the cuff, pushing and twisting.

  Afraid she might break her foot, she let up some and gently tugged at the cuff. She was so close.

  Butter, she thought. She needed butter!

  Recalling the bottle of vegetable oil, she went to the pantry, unscrewed the lid and poured half the bottle in and around the cuff.

  The thought that today might actually be the day she would escape made her try harder. Holding tight to the cuff around her ankle, she pushed as hard as she could.

  It slid right off! She was free!

  For the next thirty seconds, she stood inside the pantry, dumbfounded. Seconds passed before she finally took a few steps. Walking felt strange without a chain attached to her foot. She went to the kitchen and used a towel to wipe oil from her foot.

  At the realization that she was truly free, she walked back to the bed and hopped onto the lumpy mattress. She jumped up and down, making the hinges creak in protest. Next, she ran to the treadmill, set it on seven and ran for the first time ever.

  Finished with the treadmill, she looked around, a madwoman let loose. It took another minute or two before she could finally sit down and calm herself.

  Think, Vivian, think.

  What would she need to bring with her? The extra-long T-shirt she was wearing was all she had.

  Giddy with joy and insanely lightheaded, she hurried to the wall that was covered with fabric; a wall she’d never been able to reach with the chain around her ankle. She yanked at the corner of fabric and the sheet fell to a heap on the ground, leaving Vivian to stare at her reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror.

  She stepped closer.

  The billions of neurons in her brain were unable to register that the person looking back at her was Vivian Hardy, the same girl she’d been looking at for thirty years.

  There were no other mirrors in the cabin. Not even in the bathroom. This was the first time she was seeing herself in a long while, maybe the first time ever, since she couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a good long look at herself.

  She raised a hand to her face and brushed her fingertips over her chin and neck. The long T-shirt she wore ended at her knees. Her calves looked small. Every few years she ordered a new pair of boots, but she always had to send them back because she could never get the boots zipped over her calves.

  She lifted the T-shirt as high as she could without taking it off, unable to believe what she was seeing. Her stomach looked so much flatter. She was no Cindy Crawford, but as far as Vivian was concerned, she was
close.

  Moving to the bathroom, she looked at the scale as if it was a fiery dragon she’d come to conquer. She stepped on it and watched the numbers flicker up and down.

  Tears trickled down the side of her face as she looked at her feet and remembered the day she’d considered sawing off her foot in order to escape. She hadn’t been able to go through with it, of course. Thank God.

  The numbers on the scale stopped moving. She weighed 197 pounds. Under 200 pounds. Impossible. That would mean she had lost 103 pounds.

  No way.

  In a daze, she left the bathroom.

  She walked into the main room and looked around before heading for the bedside table. She picked up her journal and held it close to her chest.

  It would be hot outside. She had a dingy pair of slippers, but no shoes. She went to the pantry and filled a plastic bag with bottled waters. As she collected what she needed for her hike down the mountain, a rattling sound caught her attention.

  She stopped what she was doing and listened closely.

  Someone was at the door.

  It couldn’t be Melbourne. She had another week before he was due to show up.

  Setting the bag on the pantry floor, she ran back to the bed, grabbed the cuff and chain and covered the bottom half of her body with blankets. She feigned a look of boredom as the door came open.

  ***

  Hayley stood front and center inside the gym at Oakmont High. The big round clock on the wall told her it was a few minutes past seven pm. There were at least twenty girls in attendance. Not bad for a Monday night.

  Lizzy sat in a chair at the side of the room. She was the finisher, the one who would teach the girls a few classic moves.

  “If somebody comes up from behind and grabs you,” Hayley told the class, “do not hesitate to turn and knee him in the groin. You want to scream out too. The faster you react, the better chance you have of catching your assailant off guard.”

  Hayley pointed to the girl in the front who was raising her hand.

  “What if I’m so scared that I freeze up and I can’t move?”

  “That’s why you want to practice at home as often as you can. I know it’s scary and no amount of training or practice is going to take the fear out of the situation if it happens to you, but if you are always aware, nobody can catch you completely off guard and that’s half the battle. Knowing what you’re going to do will give you an extra few seconds. And those few seconds will allow you to be proactive.”

  Hayley heard the door to the gym open. She wouldn’t have paid the sound any mind at all if all of the girls in attendance weren’t staring that way—some giggling, a few looking shyly toward the ground.

  “Girls,” Lizzy said with a clap of her hand. “I’d like you all to meet our surprise guest for the night, Tommy Ellis.”

  What was the big deal? Hayley wondered. He was a preppy boy, a preppy boy with dark hair and bangs that swept across his forehead. He was about five foot eleven and slender. Overall, he looked like a dork.

  Lizzy led him to the front of the gym where Hayley was forced to shake his hand.

  Slender fingers for a boy. Clammy to the touch. Dork.

  He smiled. She didn’t.

  He didn’t waste any time stealing the limelight. Turning toward the girls in the gym, he clasped his hands together and smiled brightly. “At the Self-Defense Institute,” he began, “we want you to feel empowered by the time you leave our first class. That doesn’t mean we want you to feel over-confident. It means you leave our classes knowing something about AWARENESS and PREVENTION. The more prepared you are, the less likely you’ll need to be prepared. It’s like buying life insurance. Once you buy it, you no longer need it.”

  He laughed, but the kids in the class were too young to have ever thought about buying life insurance. Hayley shook her head. Dork.

  “Criminals,” he continued, “have a built-in motivation to go after you. It’s called desire. Once they’re on the prowl, all they need to do is find a target. Do you think a criminal is going to go after the girl with her head down, a girl who is texting her friend? Or will he go after the girl whose head is up, alert, keys in hand?”

  “Girl who is texting,” many said at once.

  “That’s right. And don’t get me wrong. We’re not trying to SCARE you; we’re trying to PREPARE you. The most important thing you need to remember is that you don’t ever want to be caught off guard.”

  Said that already, Hayley thought, but kept it to herself. His little talk was getting redundant.

  “Keep your head up,” Tommy added. “Walk with intent. Know where you’re headed. If you drive and you have a set of keys, keep your keys grasped between your fingers, ready to poke out an eye if you need to. Got it?”

  Most of the girls nodded. A few looked bored—no one more than Hayley. And that’s when Dorky Boy turned to face her as if he could read her mind. “Hayley, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Could you come here?” He pointed to the space in front of him.

  Hayley obliged by coming forward.

  “If you’re walking in an unlit and secluded area, are your chances better or worse as far as being approached by a stranger?”

  “Worse.”

  “That’s right. RISK,” he said to the girls. “Don’t put yourself in situations where the risk is too great. If you find yourself in that situation, be—” He pointed at Hayley and waited for her to fill in the blank.

  Not only was he a dork, he was a very annoying dork. “Be aware,” she finished with as much enthusiasm as she could muster for Lizzy’s sake.

  “That’s right,” he said excitedly as if these girls were five instead of fifteen. “It’s not about winning. It’s about staying alive. If a criminal takes your purse, let them have it and run the other way. If, for some reason, you are forced to fight back, then remember that there are NO rules. Use your fingers to poke eyes, bite anything you can get your teeth around, and pull hair. Best thing to do?”

  He pointed to a girl raising her hand in the back.

  “Kick him in the nuts,” she said, which was automatically followed by laughter.

  “That’s right, except for one thing. Hayley, do you mind?”

  Hayley raised a skeptical brow. “You want me to kick you in the nuts?”

  More laughter.

  “Go for it,” he said.

  And Hayley did without hesitation. She went for it. He was annoying and she couldn’t wait to put him in his place. Instead of going for his groin, though, she went for his leg, wrapping her leg around his. She had him to the ground in three seconds flat.

  “Impressive,” he said as he looked up at her, his voice low enough so he couldn’t be heard. “I guess I should have used one of the girls from the audience.”

  “Might have been a good idea.” She held out her hand and helped pull him to his feet.

  “Okay,” he said, laying on the charm as he turned to the younger girls. “What just happened was all part of my plan.”

  A few giggles erupted. Most of the girls weren’t sure whether or not he was joking, which he was.

  “Those moves that Hayley just used on me are for the more advanced. With lots of practice,” he said, giving Hayley a funny look, “that’s what you’ll all be shooting for.”

  “So who wants to be my next guinea pig? I need a volunteer, somebody who’s never had the chance to kick a guy in the groin.”

  Fifty percent of the hands in the room shot up. A couple of girls jumped up and down, hoping to be picked.

  “You,” he said, pointing to the youngest girl in attendance.

  “She’s probably ten-years old,” Hayley whispered behind him.

  “Thanks, but I’m not taking any chances this time.”

  Hayley smiled, despite herself.

  ***

  Class was over and Lizzy needed to take off, but first she needed to talk to Hayley, so she called her over. Lizzy smiled as Hayley approached. “Thanks for comi
ng tonight. You did great as always and I want you to know that I really appreciate the way you worked with Tommy.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “I think he likes you.”

  “Who?”

  “Tommy Ellis.”

  “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

  Lizzy let the curse word go. Hayley had improved ten-fold since Lizzy met her less than a year ago. “I’m serious,” Lizzy said. “Look at him.”

  They both glanced his way. Tommy smiled at them before returning his attention to what he was doing. He was sitting at a table they had set up and kids were introducing him to their parents and trying to get them to sign up for his weekly classes.

  “He’s a great guy,” Lizzy went on. “He’s only twenty years old and already part owner of the Self-Defense Institute in Roseville.”

  “That’s great. Are you trying to marry me off, or something?”

  Lizzy laughed. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

  “Will do.”

  Lizzy shook her head. The girl was as stubborn as a mule. “There is one more thing I need to talk to you about before I go.”

  Hayley was getting twitchy, her foot tapping. Patience was not one of Hayley’s virtues.

  “Cathy mentioned that you moved out to live with your aunt. As far as I know you don’t have an aunt.”

  “True that.”

  “Then why did you lie to my sister?”

  “Because I didn’t want her to worry.”

  “Did Cathy ask you to move out?”

  “Not in so many words, but it was obvious she didn’t like me going out at night.”

  “Yeah, about that, what are you doing out walking around the streets of Sacramento so late at night? You know better than most that sooner rather than later you’re bound to find trouble being out that late.”

  “Lizzy, I’ve been on my own for a long time now. I care about you and your sister and I really do appreciate everything you’ve both done for me, but I can’t keep living my life the way Cathy and you want me to live it. I’m not anything like either one of you. Your sister is great, but I was beginning to feel like a dog that’s kept in one of those horrible crates. Just thinking about it gives me shivers. I don’t ever want to feel trapped again. I’m sorry.”